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Being an education majors sounds easy right? You just have to learn how to deal with kids and teach them stuff out of a book. Well Liz’s story this semester might change your mind.

Elizabeth Bohlmann (Liz) is a Senior Education Major at Morningside college and had some things to say about the reputation that people have been giving education majors on social media.

“It pisses me off” she says as I asked her how it makes her feel. “They don’t understand how much time it takes.”

Elizabeth is taking classes this semester that are usually set apart for students, and for good reason. The lesson planning and practicum hours pile on each other and make for a busy schedule. Not to mention the two other classes she is taking, the part-time job she has, and a social life to try and keep up with.

Being this far in the education department has taking a little toll on her life. She feels and notices that her life is very different than just a year or two ago. Liz says “My social life on the weekends is almost nonexistent, I have lost a ton of sleep, my mind is always on school, and I always found myself putting school first and it makes me feel guilty.”

Guilty as in not being able to spend a whole lot of time with friends or her boyfriend. Most of the time it is to work on homework.

Liz also participated in track and dance and was highly decorated in both. But this year she decided to make a life change and not participate in those activities so she can just focus on school and graduating. When asked how she felt about it she surprising responded “I love it. After experiencing this semester, I don’t miss it. I didn’t want to put a lot of pressure on myself.

Being hard on herself, perfectionist, and meticulous are good words to describe her personality because she finds herself afraid of failure. Which could be a tool to help you push yourself to be great but it will not help with dealing with not doing the best you can. This creates a lot of pressure on herself and is something that she wants to get better at.

When I asked Elizabeth about what other people are saying about education majors she responded “Every major is difficult in their own way and the stress a little bit different.”

So next time you think about putting someone else down because you are having a tough time, just remember that everyone is more than likely going through something or has something they are struggling with so just worry about you and maybe lend a hand.

An explosion in the food court at the Mega City Mall happened today at 9:50 am. The cause of the explosion is yet unknown but Sgt. Fulsang released a statement stating it occurred in the food court.

Morningside Student and Starbucks employee says, “At first I thought something fell in the back room but it wasn’t until I saw the people running I knew something was wrong.”

The perp is still unknown and there has not been any proof to it being a terrorist attach. There was security footage at the scene but it is under investigation as of now. Until they are done with the investigation the mall will be closed, “possibly until the end of next week” says Sgt. Fulsang.

There were 2 fatalities, male and female, in the explosion, less than a 100 mall shoppers were injured, and a 12-year-old child is missing. The names of the deceased have yet to be released until the families are contacted and authorities have issued a search for the missing child.

A retired fireman was at the scene and her former training helped her spring into action to try and help out as much as she could until law enforcement showed up. The former fireman stated “I helped out as much as I could, it brought me back to the old days in the force but I did my time and I’m just glad I was there to help out.”

Mega City Mall officials came out with the statement, “Our hearts and thoughts go out to those who were injured today, and to the families. MCM will be closed while we assist law enforcement’s investigation of this tragic event.”

So with the explosion still being investigated the mall will be closed as long as into next week. Authorities are working as fast as they can to solve this tragic event but for now we just need to keep our thoughts with the families affected.

Professor Engels, a professor at Morningside for 10 years, and his family are going to be spending Christmas break a little different this year. He and is family, wife Allison and two sons Jack and Nick, are going to be going on a mission trip to Guatemala.

They will be spending 3 weeks visiting a few cities while helping build homes for those in need. Engels will be utilizing his teaching skills by trying to educate the kids in the area and get them involved in the work as well.

Engels says, “Even though we are going on this trip, I still plan on giving the kids some gifts when we return home to Chicago. I am so proud of them for being so enthusiastic about going.”

Engels will return home with just three days until classes start up so he will have plenty of stories for his students come second semester.

Talking to Dylan Mersola I got a very chilled out vibe from him. We cracked out some sarcastic jokes to lighten the mood and with the slight rasp in his voice I felt very relaxed and comfortable to talk with him. Dylan is a pretty open guy when it comes to how he feels about a situation and it made for a very easy interview.

At first he can seem a little standoffish, which is common for people, but when you initiate a conversation there is no telling where the conversation can go. Which is a great way to describe his personality; not really knowing where he will end up, but he does know he will end up somewhere. As Dylan puts it, “Everything happens for a reason and where I end up is where I am supposed to be. But whatever it is I am doing I will put everything I have into it.”

As soon as he said this I related to him a little more and it made me think about all the stress in people’s lives about getting to a certain destination, but not enjoying the journey of how they got there.

Stranger Things two, which was released this Halloween, has topped the ratings from when the show’s first season aired last year.

The Duffy brothers, the two creators of the show, did a pretty good job of learning from their inexperienced mistakes from last season and patching up some things or the current season.

The biggest criticism that they received from the first season was that of the lack of women roles in the show. There is an abundance of men that represent different aged roles in the show whereas there are only about one girl. Joyce the adult, Nancy the teen, and Eleven as the kid were the main girl roles in the first season. The rest of the roles were practically used as stand-ins.

Whereas in season 2 the Duffy brothers added Max, a kid who moved from California, to the group but throughout the show is mistreated and excluded from the group. Cody Selig says “I didn’t notice the lack of the female roll until they kept excluding Max.” And they also had an episode where Eleven found her mom and lost sister. Liz says “That episode was stupid. Don’t introduce 5 new characters if they’re never going to be seen again. Waste of my time.”

The big story is way they just forgot about Barb, Nancy’s best friend that was mysteriously taken by an extraterrestrial in Season one, and focused on Will who was in the same situation. In season two they touched more on how they just acted like everything was ok. She continued to say that everything was “bullshit” and this is where her mood towards Harrington changed. She went off with Jonathan to help bring down the Lab in Hawkins that was, what they thought, the source of Barb’s death.

All in all, the Duffy Brothers did recognize the criticism and tried to fix their mistakes that they started in season one. Even though they didn’t please everyone, they still got the result, in Season two, that they were looking for if not better as it got 15.8 million views for its premiere!

Walking across the campus of Morningside College you walk past so many different faces and personalities. It is so easy to just put headphones in and nod to everyone passing but once you open up and try to interact with people you will be surprised with kind of people you have been walking past every day.

I experimented with this and it didn’t go well right away as I got a lot of general introductions. But after I stopped by a fellow Morningsider I saw standing outside the cafeteria, I finally got to find out a little more about them.

I found out Brian Howell, a transfer Junior here at Morningside is a sophomore business major from Idaho. He came here with his girlfriend and just fell in love with the athletics and small school atmosphere.

He said “I didn’t really know about this place until my girlfriend told me they contacted her. And after looking into it for awhile it was an easy decision or me to come here.”

Brian loves to play video games in his spare time. His favorite game is Battlefield on his Xbox.

I never would have known Brian if I didn’t start a simple conversation with him. It just goes to show the things you miss when you don’t pay attention to what is around you.

Emma Watson, an actress that is most famous for her role in the Harry Potter movies as Hermione, speech that she gave at the One Young World summit on gender equality and the struggles of activism. One Young World is a UK-based charity that gathers young leaders to attempt to create a positive change in this world.

She starts off her speech by saying how it still comes to a shock to her that she is this strong of a voice in something that she never really saw herself being an “activist” for. She, lately, has been a strong supporter for women’s rights and gender equality as she said,

“I feel gender equality is as important as any other goals that we are here to discuss.”

And discuss she did as she continued on about the significant progress that the world has made in the cause for equality. She claims that she has finally found her “tribe” or group that she feels she belongs to.

“We, the entire spectrum of the feminist movement” she says, “are building an unstoppable current..”

This claiming that every person, no matter what title, has a ripple effect on how this world operates and we need to unite and work together to make this world go round.

To finish it up she listed off sayings that go through her mind throughout the day and night that absolutely scare the shit out of her, but at the end of the day she knows that is exactly the ways that she wants to live her life.

Most of the everyday person loves them and tend to struggle to put them down, video games that is.

The normal everyday video game player doesn’t know the entire backstory of how video games are designed and created. But the reason for them to be released faster and have thousands more of in-game updates than ever before is because of the overworking of the developers.

For some tasks that the developers give themselves, it is by choice. But when people are demanding a certain update in the game, it is hard to refuse that work to please their fans/followers.

It was announced Monday that for the first time in history, the collision of two neutron stars occurred 130 million light-years away sending fireworks from the explosion across the universe.

The ripple caught by astronomer’s antennas sent them rushing to their telescopes to attempt to witness this historic moment.

Astronomers believe that this kind of explosion is what gave the earth gold, silver, and uranium. So you can thank the largest firework show in the universe for all the materials found in your wedding band!

These stars’ masses are as great as the sun but compact into a radius of just 12 miles long; about the size of Manhattan.

Neutron stars are the densest form of stable matter. So much so that if you add any more mass over a certain limit it would collapse into itself creating black hole.

Scientists have yet to find what that limit is, but after this historical finding I’m sure they are not too far behind on figure that out, as they learn something new every day.